^ofPRifvcr^ 


OGIGAl 


BS2440  T47 

Thompson,  Robert  Ellis,  1844-1924. 

Apostles  as  everyday  men, 


The  apostles 

AS 

EVERYDAY    MEN 


President  Robert  Ellis  Thompson,  S.  T.  D. 


The  Sunday  School  Tunes  Company 

PHILADELPHIA 


Cop3n:ight,  iQTO,    by 
Thx  Sunday  School  Times  Company 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTBR  PAGE 

The  Twelve  Apostles 3 

I.  Simon  Peter  and  Andrew^  ....  15 

II.  James"^and  John"^ 23 

III.  Philii^  and  Nathanael" 31 

IV.  Thomas' AND  Matthew^ 41 

V.  James  and  Jude  .   ^ 51 

VI.  ^  Simon  the  Zealot  and  Judas    ...  59 

VII.  What  Became  of  the  Apostles?.    .  69 


THE  APOSTLES 
AS    EVERYDAY   MEN 


It  is  of  lasting  interest  for  every  later 
church  of  Jesus  Christ  to  observe  what  was 
the  character  of  the  first  church,  gathered 
by  our  Lord  himself,  living  under  his  dis- 
cipline, and  meeting  in  its  way  the  demands 
of  its  time.  Such  a  church  was  the  college 
of  the  Apostles. 

The  first  thing  we  observe  in  it  is  its  hu- 
man imperfection.  Later  churches  from  that 
day  to  this  have  been  arraigned  as  not  true 
churches  because  of  their  imperfections. 
Some — ^like  the  late  Joseph  Barker — have 
cast  off  the  Christian  name  and  profession 
through  disgust  with  the  loud  professions, 
the  feebleness  in  action,  the  censoriousness 
and  other  faults  of  the  actual  churches.    But 

3 


4  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

the  New  Testament  says  nothing  to  warrant 
our  expectation  of  perfection  in  a  church. 
It  does  say,  "  Be  ye  perfect,  as  your  Father  in 
heaven  is  perfect" — not  as  the  church  is 
perfect,  or  as  even  its  ministers  are  perfect. 

So  this  first  church  has  its  grave  faults, 
which  tried  the  patience  of  our  Lord  (Mat- 
thew 17:17),  which  grieved  his  heart,  and 
which  demanded  of  him  a  care  which  was 
extraordinary.  "I  am  the  good  shepherd," 
he  says,  with  a  sense  of  what  silly  creatures 
sheep  are  and  how  they  must  be  on  the  mind 
of  every  one  who  cares  for  them.  But  they 
are  his  sheep,  know  his  voice,  and  share  his 
care.  Like  sheep,  they  are  clean  in  instinct, 
hating  the  mire  if  they  fall  into  it,  always 
wanting  to  be  out  of  it  and  clean  again.  Like 
sheep,  they  will  follow  him  from  the  fold  and 
back  again,  trusting  their  going  out  and 
their  coming  in  to  his  love. 

It  may  seem  possible  that  our  Lord  should 
have  made  a  better  selection  of  men  for  the 
apostolic  office.    Then,  as  now,  there  were 


AS  EVERYDAY   MEN  5 

men  of  an  enthusiastic  temperament,  who 
when  once  convinced  of  a  truth  or  a  duty 
would  have  gone  to  the  death  rather  than  be- 
tray it.  But  these  twelve  are  mostly  below 
that  level  of  earnestness,  and  not  of  the  high- 
est level  of  intelligence.  They  thrust  their 
doubts  upon  him.  They  give  way  to  small 
jealousies.  They  miss  the  sense  of  his 
teaching.  They  fail  to  sympathize  with  his 
great  purposes.  I  have  heard  it  suggested 
that  that  sorrowful  saying,  "The  Son  of  man 
hath  not  where  to  lay  his  head,"  did  not  refer 
to  his  want  of  a  home,  but  to  his  lack  of  a 
breast  on  which  he  could  rest  his  head  with 
perfect  assurance  of  being  understood. 

Suppose,  however,  that  our  Lord  had 
made  up  this  first  church  out  of  rare  and 
elevated  natures — of  men  who  never  would 
have  doubted  what  he  said,  or  flinched  from 
peril,  or  acted  on  the  lower  motive  when 
a  higher  was  possible,  how  much  we  should 
have  lost!  We  should  have  felt  that  these 
Apostles  were  exceptional  men,  that  they 


6  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

were  strong  where  we  are  weak,  that  they 
did  not  feel  our  difficulties,  or  ask  our  ques- 
tions, or  need  the  help  we  do  in  our  tempta- 
tions. The  Gospels  would  have  been  far 
less  to  us  then  than  they  now  are.  We 
should  have  said  that  it  is  a  beautiful  story, 
full  of  religious  poetry,  but  unfitted  to  take 
hold  of  people  like  us.  We  can  have  no  such 
feeling  about  the  actual  story,  for  that  is  the 
story  of  how  Jesus  Christ  made  up  this  first 
church  out  of  just  such  people  as  make  up 
his  churches  to-day.  So  we  can  be  sure  that 
we  were  represented  in  its  membership,  our 
questions  were  asked,  our  temptations  met 
and  overcome,  our  difficulties  brought  before 
his  mind. 

Another  point  of  great  interest  in  the 
history  of  this  first  church  is  found  in  the 
individual  distinctness  with  which  its  mem- 
bers stand  out  in  the  Gospel  record.  This 
is  true,  indeed,  of  all  the  actors  in  the  Gospel 
story,  and  especially  of  those  who  appear 
in  the  third  Gospel.    Our  Lord  seems  to 


AS  EVERYDAY  MEN  7 

have  acted  upon  men  much  as  his  Spirit  did 
upon  his  inspired  prophets  and  apostles. 
We  too  easily  slip  into  the  notion  that  in- 
spiration supersedes  the  personality  and 
individuality  of  the  inspired  man.  Just  the 
reverse  is  the  truth.  It  intensifies,  expands, 
emphasizes  his  individuality.  The  prophe- 
cies of  Jeremiah  are  the  best  field  for  study- 
ing inspiration,  for  in  no  other  book  of  the 
Bible  is  it  presented  so  clearly  in  its  process 
and  its  methods.  Jeremiah  is  not  less 
Jeremiah,  but  vastly  more  of  a  Jeremiah,  for 
being  an  inspired  prophet.  Inspiration 
brings  out  his  peculiarities,  and  shows  the 
tender,  shrinking,  almost  feminine  nature  of 
the  priest  of  Anathoth,  braced  to  do  a  man's 
work  and  more,  in  a  dark  and  almost  des- 
perate age.  So  of  all  the  prophets.  They 
leave  the  stamp  of  their  personality  on  their 
work  more  distinctly  than  is  true  of  the 
authors  of  any  other  body  of  ancient  litera- 
ture. It  was  this  fact  which  enabled  John 
Sargent  to  present  them  with  such  vivid 


8  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

individuality  in  the  greatest  sacred  painting 
of  the  last  century. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  influence  exerted 
by  a  powerful  and  selfish  character  upon  his 
fellow-men  is  cramping  and  belittling.  No 
one  ever  came  under  the  influence  of  the  first 
Napoleon  without  being  hurt  by  it.  He 
found  himself  less  of  a  man,  less  respectful 
of  himself,  less  hopeful  of  the  victory  of  the 
everlasting  righteousness,  for  that  contact. 
But  these  bad  influences  last  but  their  time 
and  disappear;  that  of  God's  Spirit  lives  on 
through  the  ages. 

The  Apostles  were  touched,  enlarged  and 
ennobled  by  the  same  Spirit  as  spoke  through 
the  Prophets.  Saul  of  Tarsus,  for  instance, 
if  our  Lord  had  not  entered  his  life,  might 
have  had  a  name  among  the  Rabbis  of  the 
Talmud,  that  weary  and  dreary  compilation 
of  rules  and  opinions,  refinings  and  hair- 
splittings. He  would  have  been  lost  in  the 
crowd  of  tradition-mongers,  and  his  in- 
fluence on  the  world's  history  would  have 


AS  EVERYDAY  MEN  9 

been  utterly  unimportant.  Our  Lord's  first 
command  to  Paul,  in  the  hour  of  his  con- 
version, is,  ''Arise  and  stand  upon  thy  feet.'* 
There  we  find  him  for  the  rest  of  his  check- 
ered life,  standing  on  his  own  feet,  living 
his  own  life,  uttering  his  own  thought,  leav- 
ing his  personal  mark  on  every  word  he 
wrote,  and  all  this  because  he  is  living  and 
acting  by  the  inspiration  of  his  Lord's 
presence,  and  can  do  all  things  through  the 
Christ  who  makes  him  strong.  "Where  the 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty." 

So  the  presence  of  Christ  in  the  Gospel 
story  acts  upon  those  who  come  in  his  pres- 
ence. They  have  to  lay  aside  their  pre- 
tenses and  their  insincerities,  their  second- 
hand opinions,  and  show  their  real  selves. 
They  learn  more  about  themselves  than  they 
knew  before.  Simeon  foretold  that  through 
Him  "the  thoughts  of  many  hearts"  would 
be  "revealed,"  and  the  prophecy  is  fulfilled 
in  the  portrait  gallery  left  us  by  the  four 
Evangelists. 


lO  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

God  has  use  for  the  differences  which 
make  us  individual  and  distinct  from  each 
other.  They  stand  in  close  relation  to  our 
efficiency  in  service.  Before  a  man  can  do 
his  best  work,  he  must  discover  that  God 
has  put  into  his  clay  something,  be  it  per- 
fume or  color  or  grace,  which  he  shares  with 
no  one  else,  and  which  fits  him  to  do  what  is 
not  asked  of  others.  No  man  does  his  best 
until  he  brings  into  his  work  what  is  most 
characteristic  of  himself,  and  "stands  on  his 
own  feet."  Duplicates  do  not  count,  except 
in  swelling  the  figures  of  the  census;  and 
there  are  none  around  Jesus  in  the  Gospel 
story. 

But  through  this  infinite  variety  of  types 
there  runs  also  an  infinite  order,  adding  unity 
to  variety.  One  man  reminds  us  of  another, 
not  perhaps  in  the  outward  face  of  the  per- 
son, but  in  the  inward  face  we  call  character. 
We  come  to  think  of  them  together,  and  to 
bind  them  up  with  a  common  adjective. 
Thus  we  find  men  gathering  into  groups  on 


AS   EVERYDAY   MEN  II 

the  basis  of  an  inward  kinship.  Variety 
and  unity  thus  balance  each  other  in  the 
world  of  mind,  as  in  that  of  matter. 

Our  Lord  himself  claimed  to  be  the  Son  of 
Man,  the  perfect  exemplar  of  humanity  at 
its  best.  He  possessed  the  rounded  com- 
pleteness of  that  which  God  thought  of  when 
He  said,  "Let  us  make  man  in  our  image, 
after  our  likeness."  Other  men  are  arcs  or 
segments  broken  from  the  circle.  They 
suggest  more  than  they  amount  to.  They 
make  us  think  of  the  rounded  circle,  but  after 
a  little  they  come  to  a  stop  and  disappoint  us. 
Jesus  Christ  alone  never  disappoints  us,  but 
is  the  total  circle  in  its  fulness. 

The  Son  of  Man  came  to  gather  the  human 
race  into  one  body  or  fellowship,  of  which  he 
is  the  Head.  His  Church  is  the  expression 
of  his  purpose  to  realize  the  unity  of  mankind 
in  one  brotherhood.  Other  organizations 
accept  boundaries;  the  Church  has  none. 
From  it  no  child  of  Adam  shall  be  shut  out, 
except  by  his  own  fault.    Within  it  is  broken 


12  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

down  every. wall  of  separation  which  divides 
sex  from  sex,  race  from  race,  nation  from 
nation,  class  from  class.  The  Twelve  are  the 
handful  of  corn  first  gathered  by  the  hand  of 
the  great  Reaper  on  the  mountain-top,  whose 
seed  shall  fill  the  earth. 

In  selecting  the  Twelve,  as  we  shall  see,  he 
did  not  choose  men  of  a  single  noble  and 
responsive  type.  He  gathered  into  this  first 
church  a  notable  variety  of  just  such  people 
as  fill  his  churches  to-day.  But  he  saw  in 
each  of  them  what  the  French  call  "the 
defects  of  his  qualities";  and  when  he  sent 
them  out,  "He  sent  them  not  singly,  but  "by 
two  and  two,"  Mark  says  (6:7).  Matthew 
(10  : 2-4)  groups  them  in  pairs,  which  we 
have  good  reason  to  regard  as  the  actual 
arrangement. 

On  what  principle  were  they  paired? 
Should  we  not  expect  that  this  would  be  so 
done  that  each  Apostle  would  find  in  his  com- 
rade the  man  who  most  differed  from  him- 
self,  and  therefore  could  best  supply  his 


AS  EVERYDAY  MEN  I3 

defects,  making  out  of  two  half-men  one 
whole  one  ?  This  was  first  suggested  by  Dr. 
John  Robertson  of  Glasgow  Cathedral.  In 
a  volume  of  "Sermons  and  Expositions," 
which  appeared  in  1864,  after  his  death,  he 
tried  to  trace  the  differences  in  character 
which  justified  their  association.  In  the 
case  of  three  pairs — Simon  and  Andrew, 
James  and  Jude,  Judas  and  Simon — he 
comes  off  fairly  well;  but  even  these  are  not 
so  fully  treated  as  the  Gospel  story  warrants. 
In  the  other  three  pairs  he  fails  to  make  good 
the  contrast  he  is  seeking,  and  seems  to  ad- 
mit so  much  by  the  hesitating  manner  of  his 
statement.  In  this  series  of  papers  I  shall 
try  to  show  what  are  the  contrasts  exhibited 
in  the  Gospels,  as  indicating  our  Lord's 
purpose. 

The  Scriptures  lend  themselves  to  micro- 
scopic study  of  details,  as  well  as  furnishing 
the  broadest  views  of  the  divine  purpose 
and  its  realization  in  the  history  of  human- 
ity.    While  our   general  practise   in  their 


14  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

study  must  be  that  of  a  man  who  uses 
his  eyes  about  objects  which  come  with- 
out effort  or  instrument  into  the  range  of 
his  vision,  the  microscope  and  the  tele- 
scope may  have  their  place  and  use.  It 
is  the  microscope  to  which  we  have  re- 
course in  this  case. 


I.   SIMON   PETER   AND   ANDREW 

We  have  grown  so  used  to  calling  this  first 
Apostle  "  Peter,"  as  to  forget  that  was  not  his 
name,  but  his  nickname,  or  "given  name,"' 
bestowed  upon  him  by  our  Lord.  His  real 
name  was  Simon  bar- Jonah,  or,  in  English, 
Simon  Johnson.  And  from  the  time  of  the 
Maccabees,  Simon  was  one  of  the  common- 
est of  names  among  the  Jews.  For  while 
Judas,  the  first  heroic  leader  of  that  family, 
broke  the  yoke  of  the  oppressor,  it  was 
Simon,  the  third,  who  had  achieved  the  com- 
plete independence  of  the  people.  Hence 
we  have  two  Simons  and  two  Judases  among 
the  twelve  Apostles. 

Cephas,  or  Peter,  or  "  Rockman,"  seemed 
a  strange  given  name  for  this  son  of  Jonas. 
He  seemed  to  have  in  him  nothing  of  the 
steadfastness  of  the  rock.  He  changes  his 
mind  with  an  ease  and  a  swiftness  which  no 
other  Apostle  equals.  The  tragic  moment 
of  his  life,  when  he  denied  his  Lord  "with 

15 


1 6  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

oaths  and  cursings,"  came  not  so  long  after 
his  solemn  declaration  that  whoever  else 
might  forsake  his  Master,  he  would  stand  by 
him  to  the  death.  But  then  he  changes  back 
almost  as  quickly  into  his  old  relation  to  our 
Lord,  and  the  three  questions  by  the  lake- 
side seem  meant  to  remind  him  of  his  fickle- 
ness. It  is  noteworthy  that  in  that  inter- 
view, John  speaks  of  him  always  as  Peter 
or  Simon  Peter,  but  Jesus  drops  that  name 
and  calls  him  Simon,  Son  of  Jonas.  A  tor- 
rent-man rather  than  a  rock-man,  one  might 
have  said. 

Peter,  however,  is  one  of  several  in  the 
New  Testament  story,  who,  under  our  Lord's 
discipline,  come  to  be  noted  and  even  pro- 
verbial for  the  possession  of  that  very  grace 
or  virtue  in  which  they  naturally  were  most 
deficient.  John,  Mark  and  Paul  are  out- 
standing instances  of  this.  Grace  remade 
the  narrowest  and  most  exclusive  of  Jewish 
rabbis  into  the  largest-minded  of  Apostles. 
So  Peter  acquires  the  rock-like  quality,  and 


SIMON  PETER   AND   ANDREW  1 7 

grows  in  firmness,  until  the  Church  almost 
forgets  his  original  name — calls  him  Peter 
and  nothing  else.  Much  of  the  change  came 
at  Pentecost,  when  the  timid  deer  of  the 
Gospel  story  were  transformed  into  the  lions 
of  the  Acts.  But  some  of  his  old  variable- 
ness still  clung  to  the  man,  and  Paul  had  to 
withstand  him  to  his  face  as  blameworthy 
in  that  he  first  agreed  to  the  conclusion 
reached  in  the  conference  at  Jerusalem,  and 
then  so  far  yielded  to  the  Judaizers  at  An- 
tioch  as  to  refuse  to  eat  with  Gentile  con- 
verts. It  was  the  last  infirmity  of  a  noble 
mind,  for  they  often  give  way  wrongfully 
to  the  urgency  of  those  they  love  and  trust, 
while  standing  unmoved  by  the  threats  and 
cajolery  of  their  enemies. 

Peter  is  always  interesting.  In  this  regard 
he  holds  the  place  David  holds  in  the  Old 
Testament.  He  is  so  frank,  outspoken, 
regardless  of  consequences  at  most  times, 
and  so  generous  in  most  of  his  impulses,  even 
when  mistaken,  and  so  open  to  the  better 


1 8  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

suggestions  which  correct  his  mistakes,  that 
we  forget  his  hot-headed  impatience  and 
his  instability.  He  is  utterly  wanting  in  that 
personal  reserve  of  which  we  make  so  much 
— perhaps  far  too  much.  He  acts  on  Steven- 
son's rule,  "When  in  doubt,  speak!"  He 
cares  little  for  conventional  propriety,  or  for 
the  difficulties  which  block  the  way.  He 
does  not  feel  the  weight  of  usage  and  wont, 
which  hold  most  men  back  from  doing  a 
right  thing  if  it  be  unusual.  He  acts,  or  pro- 
poses to  act,  as  if  the  social  friction  of  resist- 
ance had  no  existence. 

With  his  reckless  tongue,  his  heedlessness 
of  prejudice,  he  seems  rather  a  strange 
choice  as  an  Apostle.  The  Church  was 
encompassed  by  jealous  and  watchful  ene- 
mies. Every  slip  would  be  caught  and  used 
to  her  disadvantage.  We  would  have  looked 
for  a  man  of  more  caution,  more  steadfast- 
ness, more  respect  for  social  opinion.  But 
our  Lord  chose  him,  and  made  him  the  fore- 
most of  the  Apostles.     What  was  wanted  in 


SIMON   PETER   AND   ANDREW  1 9 

the  forefront  was  initiative,  and  Peter  had 
plenty  of  that.  With  him  in  the  lead,  there 
would  be  "something  doing,"  and  even 
blundering  is  better  than  a  timid  inertness. 
He  who  said  that  in  the  day  of  judgment  men 
would  be  condemned,  not  for  the  evil  they 
did,  but  for  the  good  they  missed  doing, 
must  have  had  a  deep  sense  of  the  futility, 
the  feebleness  in  action,  the  sensitiveness  to 
obstacles,  which  hinder  so  much  good. 
Peter  was  security  that  the  Church  of  his 
time  would  not  perish  of  rust  or  of  dry  rot. 
So  he  had  a  work  to  do  in  strengthening  his 
brethren. 

But  the  Master  who  chose  Peter  sent  with 
him  Andrew  his  brother.  We  do  not  know 
so  much  of  this  other  bar- Jonas.  He  is  not 
an  outstanding  figure  in  the  story.  But 
what  is  told  of  him  indicates  a  man  of  quite 
another  mould  from  Simon.  Were  it  other- 
wise, how  could  he  have  been  chosen  the 
patron-saint  of  the  Scotch,  that  far-seeing 
and   "douce"  people?    He  appears  three 


20  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

times  in  the  story,  (a)  The  multitudes  are 
hungering  in  the  wilderness,  and  it  is  Andrew 
who  knows,  as  a  committee  of  ways  and 
means,  that  "there  is  a  lad  here,  who  hath 
five  barley  loaves,  and  two  fishes, '*  and  then 
he  adds  in  his  Scotch  way,  "But  what  are 
these  among  so  many?"  (b)  The  disciples 
are  startled  by  the  prophecy  of  the  utter 
overthrow  of  the  Temple;  so  "Peter  and 
James  and  John  and  Andrew  ask  him  pri- 
vately" what  his  words  mean  (Mark  13  : 3). 
That  is,  the  three  confidential  Apostles  go 
with  Andrew  and  go  secretly,  most  likely  at 
his  suggestion,  (c)  "  Certain  Greeks,"  either 
proselytes  or  Hellenized  Jews  of  the  Dis- 
persion, would  like  to  meet  our  Lord,  and 
they  go  to  Philip,  the  apostle  with  a  Greek 
name,  to  ask  an  introduction.  But  Philip 
is  at  a  loss  how  to  act,  so  he  takes  them  to 
Andrew,  as  a  man  who  will  imperil  nothing 
by  a  mistake. 

Such  were  the  two  sons  of  Jonas;  and  our 
Lord  sent  them  out  together.    He  needs 


SIMON   PETER   AND  ANDREW  21 

them  both,  for  they  each  have  a  special 
work  to  do  for  him.  And  they  need  each 
other,  that  each  may  supplement  the  other's 
defects,  and  correct  the  other's  faults.  He 
needs  the  outspoken  boldness  of  the  man  of 
initiative,  who  cares  little  for  prejudice  and 
convention  and  "the  proper  thing,"  who 
sees  when  the  iron  is  hot,  and  strikes  at  once. 
He  needs  also  the  man  of  foresight,  who  has  a 
sense  of  difficulties  and  tries  to  provide 
against  them.  But  each  needs  the  other. 
The  Radical  needs  the  faith  of  the  Conserva- 
tive that  God  was  in  the  past,  leading  and 
directing  the  course  of  events.  If  he  lose 
that,  what  hope  can  he  have  for  the  future? 
The  Conservative  needs  the  Radical's  faith 
that  God  still  lives,  and  "has  more  truth  to 
break  out  of  His  word,"  and  has  grander 
things  to  do  for  us  than  he  yet  has  done. 
The  Church  is  ill  guided  when  either  of  these 
tempers  gets  the  upper  hand  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  other.  She  is  well  guided  when  Peter 
and  Andrew  go  hand  in  hand.    As  our  Lord 


22  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

says  (Matt.  13:52),  "Every  scribe  who 
hath  been  made  a  disciple  to  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a  house- 
holder, who  bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure 
things  new  and  old."  Tennyson  interprets 
the  saying — 

"  Not  clinging  to  some  ancient  saw, 
Not  mastered  by  some  modern  term, 
Not  swift  nor  slow  to  change,  but  firm." 


11.    JAMES   AND   JOHN 

In  the  two  sons  of  Zebedee  we  have  the 
second  of  three  pair  of  brothers  among  the 
Tv/elve.  Note  the  order  in  which  these  two 
are  named  in  the  synoptic  Gospels  and  in  the 
Acts.  It  is  ahvays  "James  the  son  of  Ze- 
bedee and  John  his  brother,"  if  the  two  are 
named  together.  We  should  have  said, 
"John  the  son  of  Zebedee  and  James  his 
brother."  John  bulks  much  larger  to  us  as 
the  great  Apostle  of  Love,  the  author  of  the 
fourth  Gospel  and  the  great  Epistle  of  Chris- 
tian Assurance.  But  those  earlier  docu- 
ments ranked  them  differently. 

The  other  Apostle  James  is  called  by 
Mark  (15:40)  "James  the  less"  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  the  son  of  Zebedee,  who 
must  therefore  have  been  called  "  James  the 
great."  The  word  has  no  reference  to 
either  bulk  or  eminence,  but  only  to  age. 
The  exact  sense  is  Junior  and  Senior.  And 
as  James  the  son  of  Alphaeus  was  a  full- 

23 


24  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

grown  man,  this  James  must  have  been  well 
on  in  life  to  justify  the  epithet.  He  was 
singled  out  by  Herod  as  the  victim  of  the 
second  persecution,  and  he  died  the  first  of 
the  Apostles. 

His  brother  John,  on  the  other  hand, 
seems  to  have  been  a  mere  lad  during  our 
Lord's  ministry.  (Two  of  my  own  brothers 
differed  in  age  by  twenty  years.)  All  the 
indications  point  to  his  youthfulness:  (a) 
His  unusual  intimacy  with  our  Lord,  which 
excited  jealousy  only  when  James  was 
associated  with  him  in  their  mother's  request 
for  places  of  special  distinction  in  the  coming 
kingdom;  (b)  his  passing  unquestioned 
through  Pilate's  praetorium,  when  Peter  at 
once  was  called  to  account;  (c)  the  saying 
among  the  Apostles  that  he  would  live  until 
our  Lord's  return  to  judgment;  (d)  his  ac- 
tually surviving  until  the  reign  of  Trajan, 
which  began  sixty-five  years  after  the  Cruci- 
fixion, and  his  writing  the  last  Gospel  and 
the  last  Apostolic  Epistles. 


JAMES   AND  JOHN  2$ 

Before  I  speak  of  this  contrast  in  age,  let 
me  note  that  they  had  some  things  in  com- 
mon, which  are  noteworthy.  Both  shared 
in  the  ambition  of  their  mother  Salome  that 
they  should  be  given  the  highest  places  in  our 
Lord's  kingdom.  Both  had  confidence  in 
their  ability  to  go  through  anything  they 
might  have  to  face  on  their  way  to  that 
eminence.  Both  showed  a  vengeful  spirit 
in  proposing  that  our  Lord  should  call  down 
fire  from  heaven  upon  the  Samaritan  village 
which  would  not  receive  them.  And  John 
mentions  to  Jesus  the  act  of  himself  and 
other  disciples — including  probably  his 
brother — who  forbade  a  man  to  cast  out 
demons  in  the  name  of  Jesus  because  he  was 
not  of  their  company.  It  is  curious  that 
James  never  is  mentioned  in  the  fourth 
Gospel. 

This  ambitious,  vengeful  and  exclusive 
spirit  is  far  from  being  in  harmony  with  our 
conception  of  the  Apostle  of  Love.  John 
was  not  naturally  amiable — quite    the    re- 


26  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

verse.  The  discipline  which  made  Simon 
a  Peter  was  that  which  made  John  loving 
and  lovable.  In  him  our  Lord  took  in  hand 
the  hardest  scholar  in  the  class,  and  made 
him  proverbial  for  the  abundance  of  that 
grace  which  he  most  lacked  before  that 
discipline.  "Not  that  we  loved  God,  but 
that  he  loved  us,"  is  his  own  account  of  the 
matter.  Five  times  he  calls  himself  in  the 
fourth  Gospel  "the  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved,"  but  never  once  "the  disciple  who 
loved  Jesus."  It  was  our  Lord's  loving 
discipline  which  wrought  that  miracle  in 
him,  and  its  crowning  act  was  our  Lord's 
entrusting  Mary  to  John's  care,  as  he  hung 
upon  the  cross.  For  the  way  to  deepen  the 
flow  of  love  in  any  one,  and  especially  in  the 
young,  is  to  get  them  to  do  something  for  us 
which  involves  a  sacrifice  on  their  part. 

As  to  the  contrast  between  these  two,  it 
might  seem  as  if  it  were  not  specifying  a 
difference  of  character,  when  it  is  said  that 
their   ages   constituted    the   contrast.     But 


JAMES   AND   JOHN  27 

the  old  and  the  young,  apart  from  other 
differences,  are  contrasted  in  character.  In 
passing  from  the  one  stage  of  Hfe  to  the  other, 
we  undergo  changes  which  affect  our  minds 
and  our  dispositions  vitally.  We  acquire 
different  standards  of  judgment,  are  respon- 
sive to  different  influences,  and  see  things  at  a 
different  angle.  The  Apostle  John  himself 
lays  stress  on  these  differences  in  his  great 
Epistle  (2  :  12-14)  a-s  having  to  do  with  our 
spiritual  life  and  service;  and  Paul  in  his 
Epistle  to  Titus  (2  :  2-6)  makes  them  the 
basis  of  similar  exhortation. 

The  ordinary,  worldly  view  of  the  matter 
is  that  youth  has  value  only  as  a  preparation 
for  maturity,  that  the  world  is  the  possession 
of  grown-up  people,  and  that  children  are 
merely  incipient  men  and  women.  This  is 
not  our  Lord's  view.  He  saw  in  childhood  a 
freshness  of  life  and  feeling,  an  openness  to 
divine  impulses,  a  freedom  from  worldly 
calculation,  and  a  simplicity  of  faith  which 
he  so  often  missed  in  the  mature,  that  he 


28  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

declared  that  none  could  enter  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  except  by  becoming  little  children. 
His  demand  that  we  be  born  again  certainly 
implies  that  we  are  to  be  born  to  a  new  child- 
hood. We  are  to  return  to  the  childlike 
spirit  of  our  first  youth,  recover  from  the 
bluntness  of  feeling  into  which  we  have  sunk, 
and  part  with  our  calculations  and  our 
reservations,  which  we  have  been  tempted 
to  think  our  best  wisdom.  Good  people 
often  have  been  puzzled  over  the  problem  : 
How  can  children  be  saved?  Our  Lord's 
problem  was  :  How  to  get  grown  people 
to  become  children  again,  for  their  salva- 
tion. 

The  children  play  a  great  part  in  the  Bible, 
especially  in  the  New  Testament.  The  very 
structure  of  the  book  has  reference  to  them. 
It  is  the  only  book  that  claims  to  disclose 
God's  mind  to  men,  which  has  not  been  writ- 
ten exclusively  for  grown  people,  and  on  the 
lines  of  their  interest.  It  would  seem  as  if 
God  had  said  to  its  authors:  "Do  not  forget 


JAMES   AND  JOHN  29 

my  children.  Put  in  stories  which  will  in- 
terest them — the  stories  of  the  world's 
childhood,  and  of  brave  heroic  things,  which 
will  give  them  joy.  Put  in  the  story  of  the 
wonderful  Child  of  Bethlehem  and  Nazareth, 
that  they  may  see  in  their  Saviour  one  of 
their  own  age.  Let  the  book  have  wisdom  for 
the  wisest,  but  also  delights  for  the  young." 
So  the  young  are  represented  in  this  first 
church,  as  in  every  true  church  from  that 
day  to  this.  And  the  Master  sends  out  the 
old  apostle  along  with  the  young  one,  as  it 
is  thus  that  he  always  wants  to  have  it  in  his 
Church.  He  needs  them  both,  and  each 
needs  the  other.  Any  arrangement  which 
severs  their  activities  is  less  perfect  than 
his  wish  for  both.  Age  has  much  to  teach 
to  youth.  Its  loving  experiences  of  God's 
ways  must  have  brought  it  a  serenity  of  trust 
in  God,  an  assurance  that  his  own  will  never 
be  forsaken  in  their  need  (Psalm  37  :  25), 
and  a  knowledge  that  it  is  not  worth  while 
to  add  to  to-day's  troubles  the  imaginary 


30  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

vexations  of  to-morrow.  And  youth  has 
much  to  teach  to  age.  Its  face  is  to  the 
sunrise,  and  its  hopes  are  large  in  the  coming 
of  the  better  day.  It  is  endowed  with  the 
love  of  things  lovable,  the  hate  of  things 
hateful.  It  has  not  grown  used  to  either, 
so  that  neither  excites  a  responsive  feeling 
in  its  heart.  It  is  ready  to  believe  the  largest 
things,  if  it  have  a  Father's  word  for  them. 
Keble  has  a  fine  expression  of  this  in  his 
verses  on  "St.  Simon  and  St.  Jude"  in 
"The  Christian  Year''  : 

And  as  of  old  by  two  and  two 
His  herald  saints  the  Saviour  sent 

To  soften  hearts  like  morning  dew, 
Where  He  to  shine  in  mercy  meant; 

So  evermore  He  deems  His  Name 
Best  honour'd  and  His  way  prepar'd, 

When  watching  by  His  altar-flame 
He  sees  His  servants  duly  pair'd. 

He  loves  when  age  and  youth  are  met, 
Fervent  old  age  and  youth  serene, 

Their  high  and  low  in  concord  set 
For  sacred  song,  Joy's  golden  mean. 


III.    PHILIP   AND   NATHANAEL 

The  next  pair  of  Apostles  had  been  per- 
sonal friends,  not  kinsmen,  before  their 
calling,  although  Philip,  like  Peter  and 
Andrew,  was  of  Bethsaida,  at  the  upper  end 
of  the  Lake  of  Gennesaret,  while  Nathanael 
bar-Tolomai  (or  Bartholomew)  was  of  Cana, 
in  the  center  of  Galilee.  The  contrast  they 
present  is  in  point  of  intellectual  force  and 
agility. 

Philip's  Greek  name  is  a  reminiscence  of 
the  history  of  the  Macedonian  conquest  of 
Asia  by  the  son  of  Philip  of  Macedon.  But 
there  'was  nothing  else  Greek  about  the 
Apostle.  He  had  none  of  their  brightness 
in  perception,  their  incomparable  cleverness 
in  finding  a  solution  for  every  puzzle.  He 
was,  in  fact,  a  slow-witted  plodder,  as  is 
shown  by  every  appearance  he  makes  in  the 
gospel  story,  (a)  To  Nathanael's  objection 
to  Nazareth  as  the  possible  home  of  the 
Messiah,   he  has  no  better  answer  than, 

31 


32  THE  TWELVE    APOSTLES 

"  Come  and  see."  (b)  When  the  multitudes 
are  hungering  in  the  wilderness,  our  Lord,  as 
if  to  give  the  slowest  scholar  in  the  class  his 
chance,  asks  Philip  how  they  shall  be  fed. 
He  has  nothing  better  to  say  than  that  "two 
hundred  pennyworth  of  bread  is  not  sufficient 
for  them,  that  every  one  may  take  a  little." 
(c)  The  Greeks  who  have  come  to  the  Pass- 
over desire  to  meet  Jesus,  and  they  single  out 
Philip,  probably  because  of  his  Greek  name, 
to  effect  their  wish  for  them.  He  is  at  a  non- 
plus about  it,  and  has  to  refer  the  matter 
to  the  cautious  Andrew,  (d)  Our  Lord,  on 
the  night  of  the  Last  Supper,  is  speaking  of 
himself  as  the  manifestation  of  the  Father. 
Philip  misses  the  point  utterly,  and  says  to 
Him,  "Lord,  show  us  the  Father,  and  it 
sufficeth  us."  Observe  how  our  Lord's 
patience  and  his  sense  of  the  Apostle's  slow- 
ness blend  in  his  answer:  "Have  I  been  so 
long  time  with  you,  and  dost  thou  not  know 
me,  Philip  ?  he  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the 
Father;  how  sayestthou.  Show  us  the  Father  ?' ' 


PHILIP  AND  NATHANAEL  S3 

Such  was  he,  the  stupid  among  the  Apos- 
tles. But  our  Lord  has  use  for  the  dull  as 
well  as  the  bright,  and  Philip  was  to  be  a  use- 
ful minister  of  the  kingdom,  like  many  an- 
other dull  but  loyal  man.  He  has  need  for 
all  grades  of  intelligence  in  his  service,  and 
room  for  all  in  the  membership  of  his 
Church.  What  a  German  theologian  calls 
"the  intellectual  theory  of  Faith,"  that  which 
substitutes  the  acceptance  of  a  number  of 
doctrinal  statements  for  personal  trust  in  a 
living  Redeemer,  has  tended  at  times  to  con- 
vert the  Church  into  a  school  of  theology, 
in  which  every  one  has  been  expected  to  draw 
the  line  between  every  doctrine  and  its 
counterfeit  heresy.  But  we  are  getting 
away  from  that  to  a  more  reasonable  and 
spiritual  estimate  of  what  membership  in  the 
Church  requires. 

The  old-fashioned  Presbyterian  Churches, 
wnth  their  high  value  for  doctrinal  exactness, 
were  apt  to  make  this  mistake.  It  is  told  of 
Dr.  Samuel  B.  Wylie,  the  first  pastor  of  the 


34  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

church  of  my  boyhood,  that  once  he  received 
an  application  from  a  poor  woman  who  de- 
sired admission  to  communicant  member- 
ship, but  was  unable  to  answer  the  doctrinal 
questions  put  to  her  by  the  elders  of  the 
session.  They  recommended  her  to  post- 
pone her  application  until  she  was  better 
instructed,  and  she  rose  to  leave  the  session- 
room,  but  burst  into  tears,  saying,  "  I  do  not 
know  all  those  things,  but  I  know  that  I 
have  a  Saviour  who  died  for  me."  Dr. 
Wylie  arose,  took  her  by  the  hand,  brought 
her  back  to  her  seat,  saying,  "My  sister,  after 
all,  that  is  the  root  of  the  matter;  that  is  all 
we  have  a  right  to  ask  of  you."  Most  of  us 
have  heard  the  story  of  the  half-witted 
Scotch  lad,  whose  application  the  session  put 
off  again  and  again.  At  last  they  admitted 
him,  and  as  he  sat  at  the  communion-table 
he  saw  what  they  never  did.  He  had  a 
vision,  he  said,  of  "the  bonnie  man,"  and 
that  night  he  died  in  an  ecstasy  of  joy. 
The  Lord  had  use  for  Philip  from  the 


PHILIP   AND  NATHANAEL  35 

very  day  of  his  conversion,  for  it  was  he  who 
brought  his  friend  Nathanael  to  Jesus.  He 
went  to  look  for  him,  that  he  also  might  share 
in  the  joy  of  the  Messiah,  and  when  he  found 
him  he  told  him  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  hopes 
excited  by  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  in  the 
person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  But  Nathan- 
ael was  a  man  of  a  very  different  sort  from  his 
friend.  He  was  of  quick  wit,  alert  intellect, 
and  therefore  likely  to  see  at  a  flash  the  ob- 
jections to  any  statement.  At  once  there 
comes  to  his  mind  all  that  was  associated 
with  the  name  of  Nazareth,  and  he  asks  if 
any  good  thing  could  come  out  of  that  place. 
But  when  brought  to  see  for  himself,  and 
when  he  discerns  in  our  Lord  first  a  super- 
human knowledge,  and  then  a  divine  insight, 
he  bursts  into  that  great  confession,  which 
he  was  the  first  to  make,  "Rabbi,  thou  art 
the  Son  of  God;  thou  art  King  of  Israel." 
He  was  satisfied  in  two  questions,  and  satis- 
fied forever. 
So  the  Lord  sent  them  out  together,  the 


36  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

man  slow  of  wit  and  the  man  of  quick  wit, 
having  need  of  both,  and  each  having  need 
of  the  other.  The  dull  man  has  his  dan- 
gers, that  he  may  dwell  for  years  in  the 
presence  of  great  truths,  and  miss  both  their 
significance  and  their  comfort.  He  is  no 
standard  for  the  Church  in  the  matter  of 
what  he  does  not  know,  and  still  less  in  the 
matter  of  what  he  does  not  care  to  know. 
There  is  a  sort  of  pious  laziness  which  makes 
a  man  console  himself  for  having  nothing  but 
the  few  great  elements  of  spiritual  knowl- 
edge. All  the  Bible  he  has  any  use  for  could 
have  been  printed  on  one  page.  But  we  are 
bidden  to  abound  in  faith  and  in  knowledge 
also  (2  Cor.  8:7);  and  Paul  prays  for  his 
Philippians  that  "your  love  may  abound  yet 
more  and  more  in  knowledge  and  all  dis- 
cernment" (i  -.9);  and  he  bans  out  of  the 
kingdom  "zeal  for  God,  but  not  according  to 
knowledge"  (Romans  10  :  2).  "The  Scrip- 
tures," says  Coleridge,  "are  distinguished 
from  all  other  writings  pretending  to  in- 


PHILIP  AND   NATHANAEL  37 

spiration,  by  their  strong  and  frequent  recom- 
mendations of  knowledge,  and  a  spirit  of 
inquiry."  The  devotion  which  is  the  child 
of  ignorance  they  neither  recommend  nor 
sanction. 

The  Nathanaels,  with  their  mental  alert- 
ness, have  their  dangers  also.  The  most 
perilous  is  that  they  may  be  held  back  by 
such  superficial  objections  as  this  about 
Nazareth,  from  coming  to  see  what  are  the 
claims  of  the  Truth.  Such  objections  often 
block  the  way  to  faith  effectually,  especially 
when  they  excite  in  the  objector  an  admira- 
tion of  his  own  cleverness.  The  ^^akm&i' 
man  who  said  he  was  "a  heap  too  smart  to 
believe  in  God  and  the  Bible,"  is  not  an 
isolated  instance.  Many  a  bright  young 
man,  and  some  not  so  young,  have  had 
their  minds  taken  up  with  this  or  that  objec- 
tion to  the  Gospel,  and  go  no  farther.  The 
only  cure  for  them  is  that  which  Philip 
brought  to  Nathanael:  "Come  and  see!" 
It  was  not  a  very  bright  answer,  and  yet  it 


^S  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

was  profoundly  wise.  For  if  men  will  "  come 
and  see"  what  the  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God 
has  done  and  is  doing  for  our  race — see 
the  miracles  of  transformation  it  has  wrought 
upon  men's  characters — see  the  slow  and 
steady  gains  of  its  humanizing  influences 
upon  social  ideals  and  usages — see  the  sus- 
taining hopes  and  comforts  it  brings  to  the 
suffering,  the  poor  and  the  helpless — there 
would  be  far  fewer  sceptics  in  the  world. 

It  is  told  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  the  great- 
est of  American  statesmen — "the  greatest 
statesman  of  his  age,"  says  the  German 
historian  Niebuhr — that  in  his  youth  he  fell 
into  the  sneering  and  mocking  fashion  of 
treating  Christian  beliefs  which  was  so  com- 
mon in  that  time.  At  a  social  party  one 
evening  he  had  gone  farther  in  this  than  ever 
before.  When  he  returned  to  his  home,  and 
after  he  had  knocked  for  admittance,  the 
thought  came  to  him:  "If  you  had  been  paid 
the  meanest  retaining  fee  that  ever  was  given 
you  for  defending  a  case  at  law,  you  would 


PHILIP   AND   NATHANAEL  39 

have  given  to  that  case  ten  times  the  time 
and  thought  you  have  given  to  this  which 
claims  to  be  the  only  hope  for  men  in  life 
and  in  death."  Before  that  door  opened, 
Alexander  Hamilton  had  resolved  that  he 
would  "come  and  see"  what  there  was  in 
the  gospel;  and  as  a  result  he  bowed  his 
great  intellect  to  the  greatness  of  the  Son  of 
God. 

Let  Philip  and  Nathanael  go  forth  together 
in  the  Master's  service.  He  has  use  for 
both.  He  has  been  served  by  the  pro- 
foundest  thinkers,  no  less  than  by  the 
humblest  believers.  He  has  work  for 
philosophers  and  theologians  in  the  defense 
and  development  of  the  Truth,  and  the 
discovery  of  its  subtle  relations  with  the 
worlds  of  nature  and  of  man.  The  New 
Testament  itself  contains  suggestions  of 
deep  principles,  as  in  Romans  7:19-23, 
Colossians  1:15-20,  and  James  s'-^)  which 
have  taxed  and  will  tax  men's  powers 
of   thought   to    ascertain    the    fulness    of 


40  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

their  meaning.  The  Bible  is  plain  enough 
for  men  of  simple  faith,  and  deep  enough 
for  men  of  the  strongest  minds.  "  A  lamb 
may  wade  in  it,  but  an  elephant  may  swim 
in  it,"  says  Richard  of  St.  Victor. 


IV.   THOMAS   AND   MATTHEW 

The  fourth  pair  of  the  Apostles  are  not 
associated  in  any  other  way  known  to  us 
than  as  comrades  in  Apostolic  labors.  The 
conjecture  that  they  were  twin  brothers 
rests  upon  no  evidence,  but  it  has  been  sug- 
gested that  the  name  Thomas  is  Hebrew  for 
Twin  (Greek,  Didumos). 

For  what  we  know  of  Thomas,  as  also  of 
Philip,  we  are  indebted  to  the  fourth  Gospel. 
John  portrays  him  as  a  man  of  keen  and 
sceptical  intellect,  unready  to  accept  any 
fact  upon  authority,  or  to  blink  any  objection 
to  a  belief.  In  three  situations  this  character 
comes  out  distinctly:  (a)  Our  Lord  tells 
the  disciples  that  Lazarus  is  dead,  and  pro- 
poses to  go  up  from  Perea  to  Judea  to  him. 
"  Thomas,  therefore,  who  is  called  Didymus, 
said  unto  his  fellow -disciples,  Let  us  also  go, 
that  we  may  die  with  him."  He  seems  to 
mean,  "He  does  not  know  how  those  Jews 
hate  him;  but  let  us  go.    After  all  they 

4X 


42  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

can  but  kill  us."  (b)  Jesus,  speaking  of  his 
departure  to  the  Father,  says,  "Whither  I 
go,  ye  know  the  way."  Thomas  flatly  con- 
tradicts him  :  "  Lord,  we  know  not  whither 
thou  goest;  how  know  we  the  way?"  (c) 
Thomas  is  absent  when  the  Lord  first  ap- 
peared to  his  Apostles  collectively  after  the 
Resurrection.  "  The  other  disciples  therefore 
said  unto  him.  We  have  seen  the  Lord. 
But  he  said  unto  them,  Except  I  shall  see 
in  his  hands  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  put 
my  finger  into  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  put 
my  hand  into  his  side,  I  will  not  believe." 
But  even  that  proof  was  granted  to  the 
doubting  Apostle,  who  burst  into  those 
words  of  confession  which  have  comforted 
many  doubting  souls  since  then :  "My 
Lord  and  my  God!" 

"Doubting  Thomas"  has  been  a  proverb 
ever  since.  Note  our  Lord's  attitude  toward 
him.  There  is  no  repudiation  of  him  as  an 
Apostle.  Judas  has  fallen;  Peter  has  dis- 
owned his  Master;  but  Thomas  is  in  good 


THOMAS   AND   MATTHEW  43 

standing  as  one  of  the  witnesses  of  the  Resur- 
rection. He  is  not  the  man  we  should  have 
chosen  for  the  work  of  founding  a  Church 
whose  very  existence  depended  upon  the 
faith  of  its  adherents.  In  fact  we  hardly 
would  let  him  into  the  Church  now,  after  all 
these  centuries  of  growth  and  experience; 
and  if  we  found  him  in  its  ministry,  we  would 
have  a  heresy  trial  and  depose  him.  It  is 
told  of  a  young  Scottish  minister  that  he 
came  before  his  brethren  with  the  confession 
that  he  had  lost  faith  even  in  God  and  im- 
mortality, and  desired  to  be  released  from 
his  charge.  They  very  wisely  refused  to  do 
so,  treating  his  trouble  as  a  temporary  phase 
of  his  spiritual  development.  "You  are 
young,"  they  said,  "and  you  will  change." 
He  did  change,  and  he  lived  to  comfort  and 
strengthen  many  by  his  writings.  He  was 
George  Matheson,  author  of  "O  Love  that 
wilt  not  let  me  go!"  Love  did  not  let 
Thomas  go.  Our  Lord  knew  the  kind  of 
man  he  was  from  the  first,  must  have  borne 


44  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

with  him  in  many  a  passage  which  is  not 
recorded,  and  then  sent  him  forth  to  testify 
to  men  the  incredible  news  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, the  Passion  and  the  Resurrection. 

Thomas,  indeed,  had  a  service  to  render 
to  the  whole  Church  which  none  but  a  man 
like  himself  could.  As  Augustine  grandly 
says,  "Thomas  doubted  that  we  may  never 
doubt."  His  story  proves,  if  proof  were 
needed,  that  the  Apostles  were  not  a  set  of 
silly  devotees,  who  were  ready  to  believe 
whatever  was  told  them,  for  there  was  at  least 
one  among  them  who  insisted  on  proof  and 
evidence,  as  might  a  Tyndall  or  a  Huxley. 
Observe,  however,  that  our  Lord  does  not 
extend  his  approbation  to  Thomas'  way 
of  attaining  behef.  "Jesus  saith  to  him. 
Because  thou  hast  seen  me,  thou  hast  be- 
lieved: blessed  are  they  that  have  not  seen, 
and  yet  have  believed."  Thomas'  action 
may  be  useful,  but  it  is  not  ideal.  Faith 
rests  on  no  demonstration,  but  on  a  venture 
of  the  mind,  growing  out  of  personal  trust. 


THOMAS   AND  MATTHEW  45 

Our  Lord  avoided  every  kind  of  proof  of  his 
mission  and  his  work,  which  left  no  room  for 
doubt,  and  therefore  no  room  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  will  in  accepting  and  believing. 
Doubt  has  tormented  many  a  good  man 
under  both  the  old  and  the  new  dispensations. 
The  Seventy-second  Psalm,  for  instance,  is 
the  frank  confession  of  the  doubts  which  had 
tormented  Asaph;  and  it  is  but  one  of  many 
Psalms  which  record  such  battles  in  the 
dark.  Why  did  Paul  dread  lest  he  should 
be  a  castaway,  after  having  preached  the 
truth  to  others?  Was  it  not  the  dread  of  a 
failure  in  faith?  Luther  was  visited  by  a 
country  pastor,  who  came  to  tell  him  of  the 
doubts  which  tormented  him.  "Can  you 
still  say  your  creed  ?  "  Luther  asked.  "  Oh 
yes,  blessed  be  God,  I  can  say  that."  "Then 
thank  God  for  his  grace  to  you,  for  some- 
times Satan  plagues  me  with  doubts  even 
about  that."  These  men  knew  that  "Faith 
is  a  victory,"  and  not  a  dull  acquiescence 
in    what    they    were    told.     And    Richard 


46  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

Baxter  says  that  we  always  have  the  strong- 
est assurance  of  the  truths  we  once  doubted. 
"Do  not  fear  to  doubt,"  says  Coleridge, 
"if  you  wish  to  believe."  It  is  the  man 
who  does  not  wish  to  believe,  who  hopes 
that  the  truth  he  doubts  will  be  found  false- 
hood, that  he  may  be  delivered  from  the 
condemnation  it  implies,  or  the  responsibil- 
ity it  imposes,  who  should  fear  to  doubt. 
The  honest  doubter  who  wishes  to  believe 
will  end  where  Thomas  did,  on  his  knees 
before  the  Master,  and  his  mouth  filled  with 
praises.  Tennyson  says,  with  something 
of  exaggeration — 

There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds. 

He  fought  his  doubts  and  gather'd  strength, 
He  would  not  make  his  judgment  blind. 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  the  mind 

And  laid  them  :  thus  he  came  at  length 

To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own  ; 

And  Power  was  with  him  in  the  night, 
Which  makes  the  darkness  and  the  light, 

And  dwells  not  in  the  light  alone. 


THOMAS   AND   MATTHEW  47 

The  Lord  sent  with  Thomas  Matthew  the 
Pubhcan.  His  second  name,  Levi,  indi- 
cates his  membership  in  the  tribe  set  apart 
for  the  worship  and  service  of  God;  but  his 
profession  shows  him  self-exiled  from  his 
people,  engaged  in  a  business  which  patriotic 
Jews  despised,  and  even  heathen  detested. 
Two  facts  only  of  his  life  stand  out  in  the 
story,  but  they  are  sufficient  to  mark  him  as 
the  type  of  wholesouled  and  unflinching 
faith  after  his  conversion  :  (a)  He  was  "sit- 
ting at  the  receipt  of  custom,"  that  is,  collect- 
ing taxes  which  he  had  bought  from  the 
Roman  government,  and  which  were  his 
worldly  substance.  The  Master  passed  by 
and  said,  "Follow  me";  and  the  publican 
rose  up,  left  his  money,  and  followed  the 
Saviour.  It  was  a  searching  test.  Men 
naturally  like  to  combine  with  their  religios- 
ity a  fair  amount  of  earthly  security  for  their 
material  comfort.  They  feel  as  does  a  char- 
acter in  one  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  stories,  who 
says  it  is  well  to  trust  Providence  when  there 


48  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

is  a  strong  man  in  the  house  to  keep  it.  It 
is  true  that  other  Apostles  had  made  such 
sacrifices;  but  Matthew  probably  had  more 
to  give  up  than  any  of  them,  for  the  pub- 
lican's business,  if  it  was  contemptible,  was 
very  profitable.  And  it  was  one  which 
taught  men  to  put  their  trust  in  riches  more 
than  any  other.  The  more  wonder  when  a 
Zaccheus  or  a  Matthew  leaves  it  behind 
him.  (b)  Having  cast  in  his  lot  with  Jesus, 
he  makes  him  a  feast  and  asks  "a  great  com- 
pany of  publicans"  to  sit  at  meat  with  him. 
His  newly  found  faith  did  not  shrink  from 
the  criticism,  sneering  or  jocular,  of  the  men 
he  had  lived  among,  and  who  knew  the 
seamy  side  of  his  life,  if  there  was  one.  To 
these  men  of  low  standards  and  no  ideals, 
whose  pile  of  money  made  life  for  them,  he 
shows  his  faith  and  its  author,  and  faces  all 
they  may  have  to  say  of  it.  In  the  presence 
of  Jesus  he  can  stand  it  all. 

Observe  the  effect  of  his  call  to  the  Apos- 
tle's work  on  his  feelings  toward  his  nation. 


THOMAS    AND    MATTHEW  49 

As  a  publican  he  was  despised  as  the  op- 
pressor of  his  own  people,  and  an  outcast  from 
Israel.  But  that  day  he  rose  up  a  Jew,  newly 
conscious,  like  Zaccheus,  of  his  sonship  to 
Abraham;  and  he  lived  to  write  the  most 
Jewish  of  the  four  Gospels,  that  which 
describes  our  Lord's  life  as  a  new  chapter  in 
the  history  of  the  Hebrew  nation. 
aXSo  the  Lord  sent  them  out  together.  Hon- 
est doubt  and  fearless  faith  are  not  enemies, 
but  the  best  of  friends  in  the  long  run.  The 
Church  cannot  do  without  either.  She 
needs  the  Matthews,  who  can  rise  up  and 
leave  all  at  a  word,  in  the  assurance  that  it 
comes  from  one  who  can  make  life  supremely 
blessed  under  any  condition.  And  she  needs 
also  the  spirit  of  fearless  inquiry  and  research 
into  whatever  claims  to  come  with  authority 
to  the  spirits  of  men.  There  is  a  timidity  as 
to  such  procedures  which  calls  itself  faith, 
but  is  in  truth  unbelief,  which  dare  not  in- 
quire because  it  fears  that  inquiry  will  show 
that  the  pillars  on  which  Christianity  rests 

4 


50  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

are  rotten.  It  is  a  spirit  which  would  cast 
Thomas  out  of  the  Church,  or  at  least  out  of 
its  ministry.  But  Jesus  chose  him  and  used 
him,  and  has  use  for  such  as  he  still. 


V.    JAMES   AND    JUDE 

4bout_JheJdei^^ 
among  the  Apostles  there  Js_iuo.re_djspute 
than  about  any  other,  of  the  twelve.  ^^Twice 
in  the  Gospels  we  have  mention  of  a  James 
as  one  of  the  four  "brothers"  of  our  Lord 
(Matthew  13  :55]^Maric_^^J)j^ and  twice 
among  thewomenat  the  Cross  we  hear  of  a 
Mary  "the  mother  of  Joses  and  James" 
(two  otthe  ^' brothers"   named  elsewhere), 

along^with    Mary    MagHalenp    anH    Splnrnp^ 

and  other  women — Matthew  says  "man^" — 
^^i^_il^^  Toliowed  Him  from  Galilee.  But 
the  first  three  Gospels  do  not  mention  the 
presence  at  the  Cross  of  Mary  of  Nazareth, 
our  Lord's  own  mother.  For  that  we  must 
go  to  John's  Gospel  (19  :  25-27),  and  there 
we  find  also  mention  of  "  her  sister,  Mary  the 
wife  of  Cleophas,  and  Mary  Magdalene." 
Now  Cleophas  is  another  way  of  Hellenizing 
the  Aramaic  name  which  is  Hellenized 
Alphaeus  in  the  lists  of  the  Apostles  (Mat- 
si 


52  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

thew  lo  :3;  Mark  3  :  18;  Luke  6  :  15),  so 
that  it  seems  a  fair  inference  that  these 
''brothers"  of  our  Lord  were  really  his 
cousins,  but  called  brothers  by  a  Hebraic 
usage  found  in  the  Septuagint,  although  not 
in  classic  Greek  writers;  and  that  they  were 
the  sons  of  Khalphi  (Alphaeus  or  Klophas), 
and  a  Mary  who  was  sister  to  our  Lord's 
mother,  although  bearing  the  same  name — a 
fact  not  without  parallel  in  that  time. 

But  a  difficulty  arises  from  the  statement 
in  John's  Gospel  (7  : 5)  that  "  even  his 
brethren  did  not  believe  on  him"  at  the  time 
of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  preceding  the 
last  Passover  of  his  life;  while  the  choice  of 
the  Apostles  occurred  a  year  and  five  months 
earlier  according  to  Dr.  Riddle's  chronology. 
On  the  other  hand,  Luke,  in  the  Acts  (i  :  13, 
14),  mentions  the  Apostles,  including  "  James 
the  son  of  Alphaeus,"  as  being  in  the  upper 
chamber  after  the  return  from  Olivet,  and 
also  "Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus,  and 
his   brethren."     It   is   to   be   remembered, 


JAMES   AND   JUDE  53 

however,  that  such  general  statements  as  that 
about  the  unbelief  of  his  brethren  are  some- 
times made  in  a  comprehensive  but  not  an 
arithmetical  sense,  as  is  seen  in  the  Gospels 
themselves.  If  "Joses  and  Simon  and 
Judas"  were  still  unbelievers,  while  James 
their  brother  was  already  a  disciple,  the 
evangelist,  to  avoid  interruption  of  his  nar- 
rative by  explanations,  m.ay  well  have  said 
that  "his  brethren"  did  not  believe  on  him. 
That  there  was  not  another  "James  the 
Lord's  brother,"  besides  "James  the  son  of 
Alphaeus,"  the  Apostle,  appears  from  Paul's 
repeated  mention  of  "James  the  Lord's 
brother"  as  an  Apostle  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  (i  :  19;  2  19). 
L-Early  tradition  represents  James  as^ealous 
for  tfie  Law  of  Israel^and  anxious  to  lay 
stress  on  the  points^  of  contact  between  the 
old  and  "the  new  dispensations,  rather  than 
their  points  of  difference.  This  corresponds 
with  the  account  of  him  in  the  Acts,  where 
his  conciliatory  speech  about  what  should  be 


54  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

required  of  Gentile  converts  was  taken  as 
settling  the  matter.  He  who  stood  for  the 
honor  of  the  Law  admitted  the  unwisdom  of 
requiring  circumcision  of  those  converts,  and 
all  agreed^ (Acts  15^  13-21) .  His  epistle,  ad- 
dressed to  "  the  twelvelribes  which  are  of  the 
Dispersion" — he  was  not  aware  of  any  of 
them  having  been  "lost" — reflects  this  at- 
titude. (/It  is  the  only  New  Testament 
writing  in  which  the  meeting  of  the  Chris- 
tians is  called  a  synagogue. rv^^llthough  it 
contains  more  reminiscences  of  our  Lord's 
teaching  than  does  any  other  epistle,  yet  its 
Hebraic  tone  is  very  marked.  God  is  "  the 
Lord  of  Sabaoth."  Conformity  to  his  will 
as  expressed  in  the  Law  is  the  goal  of  Chris- 
tian living.  On  the  point  of  justification  he 
seems  to  contradict  Paul,  citing  from  the 
Old  Testament  cases  to  prove  that  a  man  is 
justified  "by  works  and  not  only  by  faith." 
On  this  account,  and  because  he  believed 
this  James  was  not  the  Apostle,  Luther  re- 
jected the  epistle  from  the  Canon;  and  in  this 


JAMES  AND   JUDE  55 

he  was  followed  by  Lutheran  theologians 
generally  down  to  Neander,  who,  as  a  con- 
vert from  Judaism,  was  in  a  better  position 
to  judge  of  its  merits. 

V^adition  gives  him  the  title  of  "the  Just," 
and  he  fully  deserved  it.  He  was  a  man  of 
practical  righteousness,  who  had  no  use  for 
the  religiousness  of  notions  and  emotions 
which  do  not  shape  men's  lives  to  goodness. 
His  epistle  has  its  rebukes  for  the  loose 
tongues,  the  empty  professions,  the  divisive 
jealousies,  the  backbiting  speeches,  Ihe  hard 
hearts  of  Christians  of  his  day  J  It  is  a 
series  of  shocks  to  those  who  imagine  that  the 
first  churches  were  perfect  or  ideal  com- 
munities. And  its  maxim  is  "Show  me  thy 
faith  apart  from  thy  works,  and  I  by  my 
works  will  show  thee  my  faith"  (2  :  18).  He 
was  eminently  a  just  man,  keeping  the  Com- 
mandments, and  inciting  others  by  word 
and  example  to  do  the  same. 

Judas,  the  associate  of  James  in  apostolic 
labors,    is    also    called     "James'     Judas," 


56  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

which  has  led  some  to  suppose  him  the 
brother  of  James,  who,  indeed,  had  a  brother 
of  that  name.  But  the  phrase  more  natu- 
rally is  rendered  "the  son  of  James" — of 
some  unknown  person  of  that  name.  In  the 
lists  of  the  Apostles  given  by  Matthew  and 
Mark  he  is  called  Lebbeus  or  Thaddeus, 
nicknames  of  closely  related  sense — "  breast- 
child"  or  "heart-child."  John  calls  him 
"Judas  (not  Iscariot)."  He  is  known  to  us 
only  by  his  epistle,  and  by  one  passage  in 
John's  Gospel. 

His  epistle  also  is  an  epistle  of  rebukes, 
but  in  this  case  for  the  false  teachers  who 
have  laid  waste  the  Lord's  vineyard  by  their 
false  doctrines.  Its  outstanding  text  is 
"Contend  earnestly  for  the  faith  which  was 
once  for  all  delivered  unto  the  saints  " — 
the  only  verse  often  quoted  from  it.  In  the 
fourth  Gospel  we  are  told  that  our  Lord  was 
speaking  of  the  manifestation  of  himself 
which  would  be  bestowed  on  those  who  kept 
his  commandments.     "  Judas  (not  Iscariot) 


JAMES   AND   JUDE  57 

saith  unto  him,  Lord,  what  is  come  to  pass 
[more  exactly,  *  How  does  it  happen ']  that 
thou  wilt  manifest  thyself  unto  us,  and  not 
unto  the  world?"  He  wants  the  matter 
defined,  as  might  a  synod  of  divines,  and  is 
not  content  to  have  anything  left  vague. 
He  evidently  was  a  man  of  clear-cut  con- 
victions of  divine  truth,  who  thought  these 
worth  striving  after,  and  worth  fighting  for. 
He  was  Jude  the  theologian. 

So  the  Lord  sent  them  out  together,  the 
man  of  practical  righteousness  and  the  man 
of  doctrine.  He  needs  them  both,  and  they 
need  each  other.  Neither  is  com^plete  with- 
out the  other. 

The  Gospel  is  not  mere  morality,  as  even  ^ 
James  will  show  you.  We  are  to  serve  God 
with  all  our  minds  as  well  as  with  all  our 
strength.  We  are  to  obey  the  truth,  and  to 
find  our  liberty  in  obeying  it.  Our  Lord  is 
the  Truth,  as  well  as  the  Way  and  the  Life. 
And  the  vivifying  truths  of  the  Gospel,  its 
wonderful  disclosures  of  the  divine  will,  its 


58  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

great  doctrines  of  grace  and  salvation,  have 
been  among  its  mightiest  forces. 

Nor  is  the  gospel  mere  theology,  as  even 
Jude  will  show  you.     Separate  its  doctrines 
from  life  and  character,  and  it  becomes  a 
very  valley  of  dry  bones,  destitute  of  saving 
power,  until  the  Spirit  of  life  breathes  upon 
them  that  they  may  live.        Separate  its 
injunctions  to  duty  from  the  great  truths  of 
its  disclosure,  and  these  become  powerless, 
as   the   green   withes   with   which   Delilah 
bound  Samson,  to  bind  and  control  the  hu- 
man will.     The  gospel  is  both   "the  power  ^ 
of   God   and    the   wisdom   of   God  " — the  ! 
power  unto  life  and  the  wisdom  unto  doc-  \ 
trine;  and  what  God  has  joined  together,  let 
no  man  put  asunder. 

Let  James  and  Jude  go  forth  together,  and 
the  churches  will  grow  in  both  faith  and  god- 
liness. 


VI.  SIMON  THE  ZEALOT  AND  JUDAS 

The  last  pair  in  the  group  of  the  Apostles 
presents  the  greatest  contrast  of  all.  Hereto- 
fore we  have  been  considering  contrasted 
types  of  mind,  each  of  which  has  place  and 
use  in  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  Now  we 
come  to  two  types,  one  of  which  has  its 
place  in  the  kingdom,  and  the  other  has  not. 
For  of  Judas  pre-eminently  might  be  said 
what  the  Apostle  John  said  of  some  apos- 
tates of  a  later  day,  "They  went  out  from  us, 
but  they  were  not  of  us." 

This  second  Simon  among  the  Apostles 
is  called  "the  Zealot,"  and  "the  Cananean." 
The  latter  is  the  Aramaic  equivalent  for  the 
former  (Greek)  term.  This  designation 
places  him  among  the  radical  and  revo- 
lutionary party  among  the  Jews,  which 
finally  plunged  the  nation  into  the  fatal 
struggle  with  the  imperial  power  of  Rome, 
and  led  to  its  dispersion  by  Vespasian  and 
Titus.     Jewish    law    and    usage    protected 

59 


6o  THE   TWELVE   APOSTLES 

them  in  doing  things  which  would  have  been 
punished  in  others,  for  the  Jews,  like  all 
other  Shemites,  regarded  zeal  as  a  sacred 
thing,  probably  a  divine  inspiration.  Our 
Lord  claimed  the  immunity  of  a  zealot  when 
he  made  the  scourge  of  small  cords  and  drove 
the  money-changers  out  of  the  Court  of  the 
Gentiles  in  the  Temple.  His  disciples,  in 
this  connection,  "remembered  that  it  was 
written.  The  zeal  for  thy  house  shall  eat 
me  up"  (John  2:17;  Psalm  69:9).  But 
the  Apostle  Paul,  once  himself  a  zealot  in 
effect,  took  pains  to  discriminate  between  a 
zeal  according  to  knowledge  and  for  good 
works,  from  bitter  and  ignorant  zeal  (Romans 
10  :  2;  Galatians  i  :  14;  4  :  17,  18;  Titus  2  : 
14).  In  modern  times  the  worship  of  "  earn- 
estness," regardless  of  its  object,  has  much  in 
common  with  the  worship  of  zeal  among 
Jews  and  Moslems. 

The  aim  of  the  Zealots  was  the  complete 
liberation  of  the  land  from  alien  rule,  as  the 
first  step  to  a  Jewish   Empire  under  the 


SIMON   THE   ZEALOT  AND   JUDAS        6l 

Messiah.  Their  motto  was  "Independ- 
ence at  any  cost!"  and  they  sometimes 
regarded  even  the  Pharisees  as  time-servers, 
much  more  the  courtly  Herodian  party. 
Under  the  leadership  of  Judas  of  Gamala, 
they  had  risen  in  revolt,  A.  D.  6,  against  the 
Census  taken  by  orders  of  Augustus  as  a 
basis  for  taxation;  and,  although  crushed  for 
the  time,  they  propagated  their  party  until 
the  final  collapse  sixty-four  years  later 
(Acts  5  :  37).  We  may  presume  that  Simon 
had  been  drawn  to  this  party  by  his  naturally 
zealous  temperament.  They  had  no  other 
attraction  for  him  than  their  likeness  to  his 
own  disposition.  And  when  he  became 
an  Apostle  he  would  not  lay  that  aside,  al- 
though he  would  blend  sweetness  and  light 
with  his  zeal.  His  motto  now  would  be 
"Christ  at  any  cost!  All  things  but  loss  for 
the  excellency  of  the  knowledge  of  Christ 
Jesus  my  Lord!"  (Phil.  3:8). 

Judas  of  Karioth   (Iscariot)   is  the  only 
native  of  Judea  among  the  Apostles,  all  the 


62  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

rest  being  Galileans,  but  he  coming  from  a 
small  town  to  the  south  of  Hebron,  which  is 
mentioned  in  the  Book  of  Joshua  (15  :  25) 
as  one  of  the  cities  of  Judah.  His  being 
selected  as  an  Apostle  has  bewildered  many 
readers  and  distressed  some;  but  there  is 
no  reason  to  doubt  his  sincerity  at  the  outset. 
He  had  been  drawn  to  our  Lord  by  some- 
thing which  he  found  attractive  to  his  better 
self;  and  his  capacity  as  a  man  of  business 
seems  to  have  suggested  his  being  taken  as  the 
keeper  of  the  bag,  which  held  their  scanty 
supply  of  money.  As  the  parables  of  the 
goodly  pearl  and  the  treasure  hid  in  the 
field  indicate,  there  are  place  and  use  for  the 
business  temperament  in  the  service  of  the 
kingdom,  as  it  is  that  which  makes  a  man  act 
on  ascertained  values  promptly  and  without 
reserve.  Indeed,  as  Jonathan  Edwards 
says,  true  religion  is  nothing  but  to  know 
great  things  as  great,  and  small  things  as 
small,  and  to  act  on  that  knowledge.  It  is 
Judas'  giving  way  to  the  especial  tempta- 


SIMON  THE  ZEALOT  AND   JUDAS         63 

tion  which  the  man  of  business  must  face, 
and  tampering  with  the  moneys  entrusted  to 
him  (John  12  : 6),  which  undermined  his 
devotion  to  the  best  things  in  Hfe,  and  pre- 
pared the  way  for  his  final  apostasy.  He 
lost  any  zeal  he  ever  had  for  Jesus  Christ. 

We  are  too  apt  to  think  of  his  sin  as  some- 
thing strange  and  exceptional,  and  as  lying 
out  of  the  range  of  our  possibilities  as  sinners. 
In  truth,  it  is  the  easiest  and  the  commonest 
sin  of  all  among  Christians.  For  this  man, 
whose  name  is  a  curse,  the  bitterest  word  that 
anger  can  fling  at  its  object,  was  just  what 
Dr.  Cuyler  calls  a  "minimum  Christian.'^ 
Almost  to  the  end  he  is  willing  to  go  a  certain 
way  with  Jesus,  if  he  be  not  asked  to  go  too 
far.  He  finds  Mary  extravagant  in  her 
spending  the  pound  of  precious  ointment  to 
anoint  our  Lord's  feet.  According  to  Mat- 
thew and  Mark  he  got  some  others  among  the 
Apostles  to  join  with  him  in  this  censure; 
but  John  tells  that  it  came  from  him  first  of 
all,  and  that  it  was  because  he  was  a  thief 


64  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

that  he  said  it.  In  his  view  there  were  some 
sacrifices  too  great  to  make  for  our  Lord, 
some  gifts  too  precious  to  offer  Him,  some 
devotion  too  profound  to  be  fitting.  That 
was  his  sin  :  he  weighs,  chaffers  and  counts; 
and  he  falls.  He  alone  of  all  the  Apostles 
does  any  counting  :  he  counts  the  two  hun- 
dred pence,  and  he  counts  the  forty  pieces. 
The  rest  give  without  counting. 

"  Give  all  thou  canst ;  high  Heaven  rejects  the  love 
Of  nicely-calculated  less  or  more." 

*'The  virtue  is  not  safe  which  is  not  en- 
thusiastic," Seeley  says  in  his  "Ecce  Homo." 
The  faith  is  not  safe  which  is  not  zealous, 
and  ready  to  make  sacrifices.  Let  us  never 
come  to  counting  how  little  holiness  will  get 
us  into  heaven,  how  little  devotion  and 
obedience  will  entitle  us  to  be  called  Chris- 
tians, how  much  we  can  afford  of  conformity 
to  the  world  without  really  belonging  on  that 
side  of  the  line.  That  is  the  Judas  temper, 
and  the  Christian  must  fly  it  as  he  would  a 


SIMON  THE  ZEALOT  AND  JUDAS         65 

deadly  plague.  It  is  the  dry  rot  which  does 
so  much  harm  to  the  Church  of  our  days,  as 
we  abound  in  formally  good  people,  who  are 
good  for  nothing  in  the  Master's  service, 
because  they  lack  zeal  for  it  and  discourage 
zeal  in  others.  Many  seem  to  think  that  the 
best  state  for  a  church  of  Christ  is  one  of  dull 
routine  in  the  practise  of  whatever  is  ac- 
cepted as  "the  correct  thing,"  and  will 
make  no  one  uncomfortable.  They  detest 
originality,  unconventionality,  initiative  and 
whatever  else  savors  of  zeal.  Their  place 
is  with  the  Church  of  Laodicea. 


As  we  look  back  on  the  story  of  our  Lord's 
handling  of  his  Apostles,  we  may  see  some 
practical  lessons  for  the  Church  of  our  time. 

The  first  is  that  no  type  of  mind  and  char- 
acter is  shut  out  of  the  kingdom,  or  required 
to  transform  itself  into  another  type  to  be 


66  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

acceptable  to  him  and  useful  in  his  service. 
We  are  not  called,  as  the  proverb  says,  to 
"measure  our  wheat  in  another  man's 
bushel."  We  are  called  to  faith  unfeigned, 
love  of  the  brethren,  zeal  for  the  cause,  and 
hope  toward  God.  But  God  delights  in 
variety  in  his  kingdom  of  grace,  as  well  as  in 
the  world  of  nature.  His  word  shows  that 
he  has  many  ways  of  calling  souls  to  himself, 
and  of  training  them  when  they  have  an- 
swered his  call.  He  lays  down  no  fixed 
"ordo  salutis,"  such  as  the  old  theologians 
tried  to  extract  out  of  the  Scriptures.  He 
can  find  use  for  the  most  varied  gifts  in  his 
children,  as  Paul  points  out  in  his  picture  of 
the  manifold  activities  of  the  first  churches 
(i  Cor.  12  : 4-31). 

The  second  is  that  we  serve  him  best,  not 
by  singling  out  the  brother  who  is  most  like 
us,  and  who  will  respond  most  quickly  to 
our  preferences  in  action  and  our  ways  of 
thought  and  feeling,  but  just  the  opposite. 
It  is  the  brother  who  is  most  unlike  us  in 


SIMON   THE  ZEALOT   AND   JUDAS         67 

disposition  and  temper  who  can  work  best 
with  us  in  the  long  run,  and  will  supply  our 
defects  of  insight  and  of  activity.  Our  Lord 
still  wants  to  send  us  forth  together  in  such 
unities  of  diversities;  but  we  have  not  been 
willing  for  this.  Our  sectarian  divisions 
have  grown  far  more  often  out  of  these  in- 
nocent differences  of  taste  and  habit  of  mind, 
than  out  of  any  grounds  of  truth  or  right- 
eousness. Therefore  the  world  has  not 
fallen  before  the  Church  and  her  testimony, 
because  instead  of  going  forth  together,  we 
have  too  often  gone  forth  against  each  other, 
like  troops  which  in  the  heat  and  smoke  of 
the  battle  pour  volley  after  volley  into  the 
ranks  of  their  companions  in  arms — or  like 
the  two  ships  of  war  which  spent  the  night 
in  bombarding  each  other,  and  then,  when 
the  morning  sun  arose,  found  it  was  the  same 
flag  that  was  floating  over  shattered  hulks 
and  decks  slippery  with  blood.  Let  us 
labor  and  pray  for  that  sunrise  in  whose  light 
we  shall  know  our  brethren  as  such,  and 


68  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

learn  to  seek  not  our  own  things  only,  but 
recognize  the  gifts  and  graces  of  our  fellow- 
Christians  of  every  name. 

Then  will  be  fulfilled  that  great  prayer 
which  Paul  prayed  for  the  Ephesian  church  ; 
"That  he  would  grant  you,  according  to  the 
riches  of  his  glory,  that  ye  may  be  strength- 
ened with  power  through  his  Spirit  in  the 
inward  man;  that  Christ  may  dwell  in  your 
hearts  through  faith;  to  the  end  that  ye, 
being  rooted  and  grounded  in  love,  may  be 
strong  to  apprehend  with  all  the  saints  what 
is  the  breadth  and  length  and  height  and 
depth,  and  to  know  the  love  of  Christ  which 
passeth  knowledge,  that  ye  may  be  filled 
unto  all  the  fulness  of  God."  Mark  the 
expression,  "with  all  the  saints"!  It  never 
will  be  until  it  is  "with  all  the  saints." 
Never,  while  we  go  on  building  up  sectarian 
walls  of  division,  will  we  come  to  enter  into 
the  love  of  the  uniter  of  mankind,  the  enemy 
of  all  parties  and  divisions,  the  Son  of  Man. 


VII.  WHAT  BECAME  OF  THE 
APOSTLES  ? 

Naturally  the  Christian  Church  has  wished 
to  know  more  of  the  subsequent  labor  and 
history  of  the  Twelve  Apostles  than  the 
New  Testament  tells  us.  The  books  and 
parts  of  books  which  undertake  to  do  this 
would  make  a  considerable  library;  but 
they  contain  many  self-contradictions,  and 
contradictions  with  each  other,  along  with 
many  incredible  and  useless  wonders.  To 
sift  the  grains  of  truth  from  out  this  mass 
of  apocryphal  material  is  a  great  under- 
taking, first  begun  by  Johann  Albert  Fabri- 
cius  of  Hamburg  (1703-17 19)  and  resumed 
in  our  own  time  by  Alfred  von  Gutschmid 
(1864).  Thilo,  Tischendorf  and  Lipsius 
have  done  the  most  work  in  recent  times. 
The  oldest  sources  are  certain  apocryphal 
"acts"  or  " journeyings "  or  "preachings" 
of  individual  Apostles;  and  out  of  these 
later  writers  have  compiled  general  state- 
ments, of  which  the  most  notable  bear  th^ 


70  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

names  of  Abdias  of  Babylon,  Dorotheus  of 
Tyre,  and  Hippolytus  of  Rome,  but  are  all 
the  work  of  compilers  of  the  fifth  or  sixth 
centuries  at  the  earliest.  Yet  in  both  these 
classes  of  documents,  as  Professor  von  Gut- 
schmid  has  shown,  there  are  historical  ele- 
ments capable  of  verification  from  indepen- 
dent sources.  And  these  give  us  a  clue  to 
the  field  of  labors  occupied  by  each  of  those 
six  Apostles  whose  history  is  most  obscure 
— Andrew,  Bartholomew,  Thomas,  Matthew, 
Jude  and  Simon  the  Zealot. 

The  enumeration  of  the  countries  rep- 
resented at  the  Day  of  Pentecost  is  im- 
portant here.  It  covers  broadly  the  region 
occupied  by  the  Jewish  Dispersion,  and  that 
therefore  to  which  the  Apostles  first  directed 
their  labors.  Luke  specifies  (Acts  2  : 9,  10) 
"Parthians  and  Medes  and  Elamites,  and 
the  dwellers  in  Mesopotamia,  in  Judaea  and 
Cappadocia,  in  Pontus  and  Asia,  in  Phrygia 
and  Pamphylia,  in  Egypt,  and  the  parts  of 
Libya  about  Cyrene,  and   sojourners  from 


WHAT   BECAME  OF   THE  APOSTLES?     71 

Rome,  both  Jews  and  proselytes."  The 
omission  of  all  Europe  except  Rome,  and  of 
all  Africa  except  Egypt  and  the  Cyrenaica, 
is  notable.  We  know,  from  the  Acts,  of 
Jews  in  the  cities  of  Macedonia,  Thessaly 
and  Achaia  (Greece);  but  these  are  passed 
over,  probably  because  they  held  a  much 
less  important  place  in  the  Dispersion  than 
did  the  Asiatic  region,  which  was  divided 
between  the  Parthian  and  the  Roman  Em- 
pires. In  the  opening  of  his  first  Epistle 
Peter  mentions  "Pontus,  Galatia,  Cappa- 
docia,  Asia,  and  Bithynia," — also  Asiatic 
regions  of  the  Dispersion,  as  he  indeed  says. 
The  historic  consciousness  of  the  Jews  had 
been  enlarged  by  the  Captivity  and  the  sub- 
sequent diffusion  of  their  own  people  through 
adjacent  countries,  mainly  in  the  Asiatic 
direction.  Those  who  were  sent  to  "the 
lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel,"  must  seek 
them  mainly  in  that  continent;  and  the 
division  of  the  missionary  field  between 
Paul  on  the  one  side  and  Peter  and  James 


72  THE  TWELVE  APOSTLES 

on  the  other  (Galatians  2  : 7-9)  seems  to 
have  been  understood  as  including  the  rest 
of  the  Apostles  along  with  Peter.  It  is 
doubtful  if  any  Apostle  except  Paul  ever 
trod  the  soil  of  Europe. 

I.  Past  the  middle  of  the  second  century 
we  first  hear  of  Peter  as,  together  with  Paul, 
the  founder  of  the  church  in  Rome.  Then 
we  begin  to  hear  of  his  being  bishop  of  that 
church  for  twenty-five  years,  and  being  put 
to  death  along  with  Paul  in  the  year  A.  D.  67. 
So  he  must  have  set  out  for  Rome  by  A.  D. 
42,  a  fact  to  which  Luke  makes  no  reference 
in  his  account  of  what  went  on  in  the  church 
of  Jerusalem  in  the  years  A.  D.  46-53;  nor 
does  Paul  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  writ- 
ten about  A.  D.  56-58.  Sir  William  Ram- 
say insists  that  his  first  Epistle  must  have 
been  written  under  the  Flavian  Emperors, 
after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in  A.  D.  70,  as 
they  first  made  the  Name  a  capital  offense. 
If  so,  he  survived  Paul  by  a  considerable 
period.    The  countries  Peter  names  in  his 


WHAT   BECAME  OF   THE  APOSTLES?      73 

own  Epistle  are  probably  those  in  which  he 
labored.  That  he  writes  to  these  from 
Babylon  (i  Peter  5  :  13)  has  been  construed 
as  a  reference  to  the  ''mystical  Babylon"  of 
the  Revelation,  namely  Rome.  But  the 
Apostle  is  not  writing  an  apocalypse,  but  an 
epistle;  and  such  a  veiled  allusion  is  alien 
to  his  straightforward  character  and  his 
purpose. 

II.  Andrew  is  said  by  early  tradition  to 
have  gone  to  the  land  of  the  Cannibals  (An- 
thropophagi) and  to  have  been  martyred  at 
the  city  of  Myrmecion.  This  enables  us  to 
locate  him  on  the  southern  coast  of  the 
Black  Sea,  inhabited  by  piratical  peoples, 
some  of  Greek  stock  and  others  natives. 
Other  accounts  represent  him  as  extending 
his  labors  as  far  east  on  that  coast  as  Colchis. 
The  church  at  Byzantium,  now  Constanti- 
nople, claims  him  as  its  founder,  but  on 
no  good  grounds.  As  Peter  puts  Pontus 
first  in  his  own  field,  we  see  the  two  brothers 
associated  in  later  as  well  as  earlier  labors. 


74  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

III.  James  the  Son  of  Zebedee  we  know 
from  the  Acts  (12  : 2)  to  have  died  under 
the  sword  of  Herod  about  A.  D.  42.  This 
confirms  the  early  tradition  that  the  Apostles 
stayed  about  twelve  years  in  Jerusalem  be- 
fore dispersing. 

IV.  John  the  son  of  Zebedee  we  know  to 
have  received  from  our  Lord  the  trust  of  his 
mother  Mary.  We  also  know  that  he  out- 
lived all  the  other  Apostles,  dying  in  the 
reign  of  Trajan,  which  began  A.  D.  98,  that 
he  was  banished  to  Patmos,  probably  in  the 
previous  reign,  and  that  he  spent  his  last 
years  in  Ephesus,  laboring  to  promote  love 
among  its  Christians.  The  Muratorian 
Fragment  (A.  D.  75)  tells  us  that  he  wrote 
the  last  Gospel  at  the  persuasion  of  his 
brethren  in  the  ministry.  The  story  of  his 
miraculous  deliverance  from  death,  on  being 
plunged  into  a  cauldron  of  boiling  oil,  is 
apocryphal. 

V.  Philip  is  identified  by  some  with  the 
Evangelist  of  that  name,  who  was  the  in- 


WHAT  BECAME   OF  THE   APOSTLES?      75 

strument  of  the  conversion  of  the  treasurer 
of  Queen  Candace,  and  who  had  four 
daughters  possessing  the  gift  of  prophecy. 
But  this  seems  to  have  been  a  different 
Philip,  as  he  never  is  mentioned  as  an 
Apostle.  Four  very  early  Fathers  of  the 
Church  mention  the  Apostle  Philip  as  labor- 
ing in  Phrygia,  of  which  Colosse  was  a  city, 
and  as  dying  and  being  buried  at  Hierapolis. 
It  is  not  said  that  he  was  a  martyr. 

VI.  Nathanael  bar-Tolomai  found  his 
field  of  labor  in  Pontus,  and  the  adjacent 
parts  of  Armenia.  Two  historic  kings  come 
into  his  legend,  Artasy  of  Armenia  and  Pole- 
mon  of  Pontus,  brothers,  and  also  Polemon's 
wife,  Queen  Tryphaena,  a  granddaughter 
of  Mark  Anthony  and  Cleopatra,  and  a 
prominent  figure  in  the  curious  story  of  Paul 
and  Thecla. 

VII.  Of  the  Apostle  Thomas  we  have  a 
fuller  account  than  of  most  of  the  Apostles, 
and  while  this  is  mixed  with  the  marvelous 
to  an  extraordinary  degree,  there  are  his- 


76  THE   TWELVE  APOSTLES 

torical  elements  easily  discovered  and  sepa- 
rated. He  labored  in  the  Parthian  Empire 
and  probably  on  the  frontiers  between  Par- 
thia  and  India,  at  a  time  when  the  Booddhists 
of  India  were  making  inroads  on  the  Zoro- 
astrians  of  eastern  Parthia,  and  the  Par- 
thians  were  retaliating  by  conquests  of  the 
Indian  province  called  White  India  or  Ara- 
chosia.  The  name  of  King  Gondophares,  the 
Parthian  ruler  who  effected  this,  is  found  on 
ancient  coins,  and  his  capital  near  Herat  is 
mentioned  both  in  the  Thomas-legends  and 
in  ancient  sources.  It  is  said  that  Thomas 
converted  the  "three  kings  of  the  East,'* 
who  came  to  bring  gifts  and  adoration  to  the 
infant  Saviour.  Prof.  Gutschmid  is  able 
to  trace  the  three  traditional  names — Bal- 
thasar,  Melchior  and  Gaspar  to  Parthian 
names  of  this  time.  One  tradition  fixes  the 
scene  of  Thomas'  martyrdom  at  a  point  on 
the  Indian  coast  near  Bombay.  The  Syrian 
Christians,  settled  on  that  coast  centuries  at 
least  before  European  navigators  reached 


WHAT   BECAME  OF  THE  APOSTLES?      77 

India,  claim  Thomas  as  their  founder,  but 
with  small  reason. 

VIII.  Matthew  is  described  by  one  tradi- 
tion as  preaching  the  gospel  among  the 
Ethiopians  of  Abyssinia;  but  this  we  know 
to  be  impossible,  as  the  Christianization  of 
that  country  was  begun  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury. It  is  more  probable  that  he  labored 
first  in  the  Syrian  colony  established  at 
Palmyra  (Tadmor)  in  the  wilderness  be- 
tween Damascus  and  the  Euphrates,  and 
that  he  passed  eastward  to  the  Median  people 
of  Carenania.  Another  tradition  takes  him 
to  labor  with  Andrew  am.ong  the  man-eaters 
on  the  coast  of  the  Black  Sea. 

IX.  James  the  son  of  Alphaeus  is  generally 
regarded  as  having  remained  in  charge  of 
the  church  in  Jerusalem,  when  the  rest  of 
the  Apostles  dispersed  to  their  several  fields 
of  labor.  His  story  is  much  obscured  by 
Ebionite  fables,  some  of  which  are  repro- 
duced by  Hegesippus  (A.  D.  170)  and  by 
the  pseudo-Clementine  writings,  which  exalt 


78  THE  TWELVE   APOSTLES 

him  to  a  sort  of  popedom  over  the  whole 
Christian  Church,  with  even  Peter  as  his 
humble  subordinate. 

X.  Judas,  not  Iscariot,  found  his  field  of 
labor  in  the  Syrian  kingdom  of  Osroene, 
with  its  capital  at  Edessa,  the  first  definitely 
Christian  country,  as  its  king  Abgar  V  (B.  C. 
15-A.  D.  50)  became  a  convert.  The  apostle 
is  said  to  have  died  at  Berytus  (Beyrout). 

XI.  Simon  the  Zealot  found  his  field  of 
activity  in  the  Parthian  Empire.  At  this 
time  it  was  governed  by  two  kings,  brothers, 
Vardana  reigning  at  Babylon  and  Nerseh 
(corrupted  into  Xerxes)  in  Persia.  The 
Apostle  seems  to  have  begun  his  labors  in 
the  South  at  Babylon,  and  moved  northward 
through  the  empire,  as  he  met  his  death  at 
Colchis  in  the  far  north. 

XII.  Of  the  sad  ending  of  Judas  Iscariot 
I  need  not  speak,  except  to  note  that  the 
phrase  used  by  Peter  (Acts  i  :  18)  as  to  the 
manner  of  his  death,  is  the  Hebraic  equiva- 
lent of  our  modern  phrase  "broke  his  heart." 


WHAT    BECAME   OF    THE   APOSTLES?      79 

Of  the  Matthias  appointed  to  take  his  place 
the  history  tells  us  nothing  we  can  accept  as 
authentic. 

The  field  of  labor  of  the  Apostles  of  the 
Circumcision  is  thus  seen  to  have  been  west- 
ern Asia,  from  the  Black  Sea  to  the  Persian 
Gulf,  and  from  the  Levantine  coast  to  the 
frontiers  of  Bactria  and  India.  This  we 
know  to  have  been  the  home  of  that  part  of 
the  Jewish  people  which  did  not  return  from 
the  Captivity,  or  did  so  but  temporarily. 
This  embraced  what  the  Apostle  James  calls 
"the  Twelve  Tribes  in  the  Diaspora^^  (or 
"the  Dispersion"),  and  not  two  tribes  only, 
as  has  been  fancied  in  later  times.  The 
New  Testament  knows  nothing  of  any  "lost 
Tribes"  of  the  Jewish  people. 


BS2440 .T47 

The  apostles  as  everyday  men, 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


III 
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